The arrangement has been kept in the original order created by Jason Holcomb. The collection includes six (6) DVDs containing WAV format interview audio files, PDF format transcripts of the interviews, PDF files of published articles, and scanned photo image files of interviewees with photo indexes between 2008 and 2010. An index was created for eight (8) interviews in cooperation with the MHAM.

This collection contains oral histories of custom harvesters operating in Kansas and surrounding states. Twenty-five interviews of individuals and couples, some from Mennonite families, were conducted between 2008 and 2010 by Jason P. Holcomb, Associate Professor of Geography, Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, in an oral history project partially funded by the Kansas Humanities Council and the Mennonite Heritage and Agricultural Museum (MHAM).

This collection consists of 58.7 hours of audio files and the accompanying transcripts of oral history interviews with custom harvesters. Those interviewed were all from the United States except for one participant from Saskatchewan, Canada. American participants were from Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, or North Dakota. The time period discussed in the interviews ranges from pre-World War II to 2010 with first-person accounts of harvest from the 1950s to 2010. All persons interviewed were retired or working custom harvesters, yet the project has a distinct group of interviews, 21.5 hours in length, exclusively with Mennonite custom harvesters. The interviews with Mennonite custom harvesters began when Mr. Schmidt recommended interviewing Waldo and Doris Froese of Inman, KS, one of the communities in the Mennonite settlement area of south-central Kansas. Other communities include Buhler and Moundridge. Dr. Holcomb then recruited others in this area for a separate project that included interview questions pertaining specifically to Mennonite custom harvesters. Dr. Holcomb received grant funding from the Kansas Humanities Council, with sponsorship from the Mennonite Heritage & Agricultural Museum in Goessel, KS, which he used to pay for travel and transcription expenses for these interviews. There is a subject index of the transcripts of the interviews with Mennonites.

Dr. Holcomb obtained 244 complimentary photos and news articles from participants to augment the interviews. Photos were either from the personal collections of those interviewed or were taken by the research team. There are two photo keys that provide captions for the photos. All interviews were conducted between 2008 and 2010. Questions asked fell into broad categories of family history and background, geography and sense of place, harvester identity and lifestyle, equipment, labor, and, in the case of the Mennonite participants, details about faith and the relationships between faith and the work of custom harvesting, pacifism, and conscientious objector status.